Backstory: H.L. Mencken, 'The Sage of Baltimore,' had a zing bloggers can't touch

Mencken may or may not have been a misogynist, but he was hardly a misanthrope. He loved the camaraderie he had over beer, cigars, and German music he made with his friends in the Saturday Night Club as intensely as he despised Prohibition, religion, censorship, altruism, bureaucrats, and politicians.

For Fitzpatrick, the clippings prove that Mencken is "the most frequently quoted American writer, even today." Only Mark Twain is in his league. Fitzpatrick credits it to his writing: "He's one of the greatest prose stylists that has lived in America." Others agree.

"He is the only American journalist of his generation whose work is still read – who is, indeed, a genuinely popular writer," says Terry Teachout, author of "The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken."

"Mencken survives because he remains contemporary with a style that resounds regardless of time or individuals," says S.L. Harrison, editor of Menckeniana, the journal that publishes articles about the man. "The things he wrote apply to the present day."

Things like, "Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." This quote could have fallen from Mencken's lips at any time during his career, starting with America's entry into World War I and the subsequent harassment of German-Americans during Woodrow Wilson's administration, which countenanced laws prohibiting Americans from insulting their government. To the degree that he could, Mencken spoke out. Later, he even more vehemently attacked FDR's administration, and every one between the two.

Most agree that Mencken's durability represents a triumph of style – a style so thunderous and powerful, explosively funny, withering in its skepticism, rigorous in its commitment to honesty, logic, and truth as he saw it, that even now it's capable of winning the attention of serious people, while raising hackles among the other sort.

But Fitzpatrick garners other reasons beyond this for Mencken's durability. As the editor of The Smart Set and the American Mercury, he advanced the work of many writers: Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Joseph Conrad, Willa Cather. His three memoirs – "Happy Days," "Newspaper Days," "Heathen Days" – remain popular. His monumental study of the American vernacular, "The American Language," says Mr. Harrison, "might have constituted the life's work of a lesser man."

Mencken repeatedly eluded obscurity. In 1933, for instance, having stepped down as editor of the American Mercury, he continued successfully with his newspaper commentary until about 1935, when he found himself at odds with current thinking: The New Deal and the Depression. Out of favor, he unveiled his greatest literary achievement, the Days books. To Fitzpatrick, "It was Mencken at the top of his game."

Mencken, who once declared that "Hope is a pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible," disregarded that observation near his end. The man who described the tombstone as "an ugly reminder of one who has been forgotten," and life as "a dead-end street," sought to disprove these axioms, and in a way succeeded. He arranged for the graduated release of his papers through time-lock agreements that have had the effect of stimulating public attention for decades.

He died in 1956. In 1971, the New York Public Library released a spray of his letters. (He wrote over 100,000.) Scholars, biographers, commentators brought forth books, articles, monographs. In 1981, the Pratt released his diary, which incited allegations of anti-Semitism, racism. In 1991, more new material put him before the public eye.

All this confirms Fitzpatrick's famous line: "Mencken had carefully managed his career from the grave."

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